


Into the Frosty Woods

by serendipityxxi



Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 06:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipityxxi/pseuds/serendipityxxi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kensi, Deeks, a pillow fort and some Robert Frost. Set some time in mid season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Frosty Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Disclaimed.

[This was my inspiration for this piece.](http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/7126/ldnh.jpg) I wanted to send someone to this cabin and then Robert Frost decided to come along. IDEK.

  
  


The image is photographer [Angex Lin's](http://aintbadmagazine.com/Angex-Lin) and the poems referenced herein all belong to Robert Frost I'm just a fan.

 

=====================================

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” Deeks interrupts the silence of their trek to warble. 

“Oh no, we have miles to go before you’re allowed to be enthusiastic about the woods, several hundred of them, like when I’m back in my apartment, that many miles,” Kensi warns. 

Deeks’ dropped jaw makes her roll her eyes but inwardly she’s smug. His blond hair is the brightest thing in the woods which are in fact dark and deep with shadow, though lovely is not a word Kensi would use in hour three of their hike with her feet aching and the sky threatening to pour down on them.

“Yes, I’ve read a poem, try not to faint,” she snarks, tugging her black scarf higher. The clouds overhead rumble ominously, forcing the smirk off her face.

~*~*~*~

It’s fifty minutes later, ten minutes after the rain started dripping through the trees and down the back of Kensi’s neck, when damp, cold, exhausted and sore, they find the perp’s cabin. It’s empty and not in a ‘just ran out to get some milk’ way but in a ‘no one’s lived here for months, sucker’ sort of way. Figures. They do some poking around, their footsteps echoing on the hardwood floors in the abandoned rooms. They come up with a great big load of bupkiss paired with the skies finally opening up and letting down the rain that’s been threatening all day.

Kensi joins Deeks at the wall of windows. The cabin was built by a lake and the view is pretty spectacular. They stand there side by side, so close Kensi can feel Deeks’ warmth on her arm. She’s glad he’s with her though she’d never admit it. It’s a nice view and there's no one else she'd want to share it with. They watch as the misty green mountains disappear behind a grey veil of rain. The lake is green as well, more jade than forest green where the water starts reflecting the grey of the sky. The rain patters at the roof, a gentle drumbeat at first but quickly gaining in tempo and volume.

“Guess we won’t be going anywhere in this mess,” Deeks ventures, pushing a hand though his damp hair in a way that is not at all attractive, damnit.

“No shit, Sherlock.” Kensi stomps away from the window and flops onto the perp’s couch producing a cloud of dust that engulfs her swiftly, leaving her coughing and sneezing for a good five minutes and wheezing intermittently for the rest of the night.

“Guys,” their radio flares to life, the mountains having blocked out their comms. “We’ve got some weather moving in,” Eric’s voice is clearly worried despite the crackliness of the device. “Hetty says you should stay put at the cabin, if it’s safe, until morning.”

“Thanks, Eric, will do,” Deeks radios in for the two of them while Kensi sneezes for the thirteenth time.

‘Some’ weather was clearly the understatement of the week. The storm that had been lurking menacingly all afternoon made good on its threat with torrents of rain, wind that rattles the glass in its panes and loud crashes of thunder.

~*~*~*~

Reluctantly the partners settle in for the evening. Kensi continues to sneeze. Deeks continues to tease. She threatens to use Deeks’ t shirt as a snot rag. They discover there’s no gas for the generator which means the bedrooms are out, no fireplaces in them. Deeks carefully pulls the coverings from the rest of the furniture. Kensi starts a fire in the fireplace in the living room and then sneezes it out two, almost three times. The third time Deeks cups his hands around hers and blows gently on the small flames til they flicker into life. Kensi’s breath catches in her throat and she shivers. The rain continues to fall. The temperature continues to drop. The wall of windows facing the lake does nothing to help keep them insulated. The small fire they made with what remains of the woodpile might last ‘til morning if they’re careful but Kensi knows it won’t be enough.

Deeks finds blankets and jokes about building a fort on the living room floor. He’s surprised when Kensi hauls over two chairs from the dining set to help with the construction. They argue as they usually do; about the structural soundness of the fort, about the pros and cons of sheet walls (better ventilation, says Deeks) versus blanket walls (better insulation, says Kensi) and, use the cushions from the uncovered couch set as their base. It is only when the last cushion is placed, their fort more of a cave with the opening pointed towards the fire, that the partners realize they are left with nothing to do but share the space they’ve crafted.

There is a long awkward moment and then Deeks drops to his knees and crawls in.

“So I think my side’s stable, partner,” he calls from inside. “I’m kind of afraid of yours though,” he teases. Kensi rolls her eyes again and crawls inside. It’s dim but Deeks has his phone on as a flashlight, the white light mixing with the orange from the fire and casting odd shadows on his face. He looks so serious, Kensi feels a shiver of...something shoot up her spine. Then he smiles and is Deeks again.

They fight over cushion space. That ends when they almost bring the fort down on their heads. They eat trail mix for dinner and share the kitkat bar Kensi had in her pack after much wheedling on Deeks’ part (though surprisingly not as much as he expected), water from their packs again and when that is over the awkwardness falls over them.

“Well wifey,” Deeks says, referring to the last time they shared a bed, “I’m prepared to deal with your starfish sleeping habits but I warn you they may cause a collapse.”

Kensi is about to retort when she sneezes again. Deeks make a grossed out face. Kensi smiles sweetly at him and turns out the light feeling for once like she came out on top of that sparring session.

They lay in the dark, the fire crackling and the rain pouring outside. As much as Kensi hates to admit it, it’s actually kind of cosy, lying here with her partner in the dark. It feels like they’re sharing a cocoon. For right now they’re safe and no one can touch them.

It’s a heady feeling being safe. Even in their apartments back home she knows they’re both just waiting for the day some bad guy follows them home or even just for the phone to ring calling them out on a case. Most days Kensi looks forward to the danger, most days she relishes it, the adrenaline rush, the opportunity to right a wrong, to put the bad guys away. Lately though with her father’s murder solved and after that op they spent as Justin and Melissa, Kensi’s allowed herself to admit she sort of longs for moments like this. Moments when she knows she and the people she cares about are safe. She thinks she might even be able to get used to something like that a little farther down the line.  


In the meantime she’ll take the moments she gets.

She shifts a little closer to her partner, she’ll say it’s for warmth if anyone asks, finds his hand in the dark and lays hers right next to it. Deeks covers her chilly fingers with his own and for once says nothing. He’s been doing that more and more lately, following her lead without comment. Deeks is a pretty great guy and she knows it, but in moments like this she’s incredibly grateful for how good he is with her.

She rewards his silence. “Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow.”  
Deeks squeezes her fingers and rolls to face her in the confines of their fort.

Kensi carefully keeps her gaze on their roof.

“Wouldn’t have thought you’d know Frost,” he says quietly.

“My dad liked him,” she confesses. “Because of my mom, I guess. Before,” she doesn’t specify before what, “he’d quote a line here or there and she’d light up...”

She can tell Deeks is surprised by that. Her dad had loved to quote Frost’s “Fire and Ice” in his big booming voice on cold winter mornings while the Blye family got ready for work and school. When she thought of her parents together she always had that image of fire and ice. She could easily have seen the two of them tearing down the world before they split.

She can also tell Deeks is trying to figure out something to say that isn’t flip. Before he sprains something she breaks the mood: “I wouldn’t have thought you’d know that one anyway, you’re more of a two roads diverged kind of guy,” she tells him.

“I am a trailblazer,” he agrees, “who else can say they’re as well versed in Kensi-taming?”

“Taming?” she repeats, outraged, snatching her hand away to punch him in the shoulder. There was no heat in it though and they both knew it because Deeks continued, getting back into their rhythm of tease and retaliate.

“Keep that up, Kensalina and I’ll have to get a chair and a whip,” he grins, his eyes twinkling at her in the half light.

Kensi huffs and mutters something about the whip that Deeks couldn’t have caught but he doesn’t let that stop him. His smile grows even wider and she knows she’s going to regret her words even before he speaks. “Kinky, Kens, I didn’t think you’d be into that, but I’m game if you are.”

Kensi hits him in the shoulder and flops on her back. “Goodnight, Deeks!” she says instead of anything that might give him more ammo, not because she didn’t have a reply for that.

He opens his mouth to say something and she puts her hand over it before he can speak.

“Good. Night. Deeks,” she repeats.

He licks her palm and she shrieks, pulling her hand away.

“Ew!”

Deeks only laughs and lays back, throwing one arm up behind his head, leaving his other hand laying on the cushions between them, open and inviting. Kensi isn’t brave enough to be the one to reach out first so instead she wipes her hand on his shoulder with a grossed out face then lays down as well.

They are quiet after that for so long that Kensi thinks Deeks must have fallen asleep. She turns her head and lets her eyes roam his messy curls in the firelight for long moments. The Frost poem that Kensi can recite from memory is Nothing Gold Can Stay. _Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold, her early leaf’s a flower but only so an hour then leaf subsides to leaf, so Eden sank to grief. So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay._ Kensi knows that. She’s been taught that lesson over and over again. And still, sometimes she wants to forget. Sometimes she wants to believe that some things are permanent, some people might stay.  
Kensi rolled onto her side, facing away from Deeks and shut her eyes tightly.

Deeks followed her move, turning on his left as well. He looped an arm around Kensi’s waist, pulling her flush to him.

“Deeks,” she protested but he just snuggled closer, letting his chin rest on her shoulder.

“Body heat,” he grumbled at her sleepily.

Kensi knew now he hadn’t been asleep, but it was cold. She let him tuck the blankets more snugly around them, laid her arm over his around her waist, and absolutely did not - she would swear to this, despite how it may have seemed at the time - snuggle back into him. At gunpoint she might admit that it was nice. It melted the ball of ice that had lodged in her throat. It was exactly what she needed right then and that was just so Deeks. She’d hated how well he could read her when they’d first been partnered, how he just barged past her boundaries and helped when he thought she needed it and now...

Deeks buried his nose in her hair and that was kinda nice too because his breath was warm. So was his arm for that matter. Kensi pressed her socked feet against his calves, hoping to warm up her toes too. And as the rain poured down and the fire crackled gently, Kensi drifted off to sleep, warm and safe in her partner’s embrace. Her last thoughts were the last lines of the yellow wood poem.

_Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -_  
 _I took the one less travelled by_  
 _And that has made all the difference._

Maybe someday she would be brave enough to take the road less travelled with Deeks.


End file.
